Snape and Harry again.

[Kethryn]

No: HPFGUIDX 113972

Alla:

Welcome, Kethryn!

Yes, I think I agree with you that Snape could not let Harry know 
that he got his message, although he is a smart man, maybe he could 
have come up with something. I don't hold that against him though, I 
realise that he was in a very tough spot with Umbridge.

In regard to your next point - please, please, don't think that I am 
picking up on you, please feel free to disagree as much as you can, 
but I think that if I hear again "slapping Harry's ego down" as 
justification of Snape's abuse of him, I am going to bang my head 
against the wall. :o)

<snip>

I dislike that decision immensely, but what if indeed that was the 
safest place for Harry? You know, picking the lesser evil?

<snip>


Because I always read it as Dumbledore regret' that Harry did NOT 
grew up a pampered little prince, but at least was as normal as 
possible under bad circumstances.

So, I am afraid I fail to see the parallels between Dumbledore's and 
Snape's actions.


Kethryn's comments - 

Thanks for the welcome mat, Alla!

As for my furthering comments on Snape (and no I won't ever take offense at someone who disagees with me), I did not mean to imply that there was a parallel between Snape and Dumbledore's actions.  All I meant was that, in their own very different ways and styles, both of them were trying to protect Harry from becoming unmanagable due to ego.  Different means, yes.  Are either one of them the right course?  Now that is debatable.

Certainly, by the standards of which I was raised (southern girl here) Snape's actions border on abusive towards Harry in particular and the rest of the Griffindors in general.  But we don't see how he treats Hufflepuffs or Ravenclaws or even other Griffindors that are not in the same year as Harry.  For all we know, Snape is a great teacher to the other houses (not that I particulary espouse this view).  The more I think about it, the more Snape reminds me of a teacher that has been teaching way too long and is too burned out to be anything other than bitter and mean.  When you add to that the stress of being a double agent, being the product of an abusive household, and having to teach a kid whose father he despised, I can see why he would act the way that he does.  Again, I am not excusing this behavoir or condoning it but I do understand it.

It has to be hard to be a double agent, all the more so when you know for a fact that if you are caught by the bad guys, you will face your worst nightmares before being allowed the release of death, assuming that you will be granted that death in the first place.  Snape has to know that if Voldemort catches on to him that he will wish that he had never ever been born.  Of course, he has probably wished that for most of his childhood (being raised in an abusive home is no fun for anyone and is bound to leave some serious scars) so it would be nothing new to him.  But what if Voldemort could lock him into his childhood for eternity?  That, to me, would be way worse than death and would take some serious courage to face that possibility.

I don't think that Snape is a bad person.  I do think he is redeemable, partially because of Dumbledor and partially because he continues to show massive amounts of courage in the face of very severe adversary.  I do wish that we knew more about why James and Snape were such arch enemies...could it be as simple as what happens between Malfoy and Harry after all or is it something much deeper than that?  I don't know about the rest of you but I felt like I had just found out that Santa Claus did not exist when I read that scene in the pensive in OotP...which is the effect I am sure JKR was going for.  I want to know why the two of them were enemies, probably as much as Harry does, so that I can cement in my mind what Snape is and, to some extent, what James was.

And, finally, I think there is some serious regret on Snape's part as to his and James' relationship.  Not a regret so much that the two of them were enemies but that he was robbed of the chance to put a "the end" stamp on that part of his life.  Honestly, if any literary character ever needed a psycologist as much as Snape does, I would be vastly surprised (I am an English major and I have read a ton so I can say that I have never met a more complex man than Snape...no, not even Hamlet).

Again with my two cents,

Kethryn who admits that she may be biased slightly towards Snape because Alan Rickman plays him in the movies but, at the same time, is having a hard time with the scene in the pensive still because she wants a reason why James acted like a jerk and a bully without making either Snape or James out to be the big bad monster.